HANNS EISLER Ernste Gesänge. Lieder with piano. Piano Sonata op.1 Matthias Goerne, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi, Thomas Larcher

From 1920s Vienna and the Berlin of the Weimar Republic to emigration to the USA, then back to Vienna after the defeat of Nazism, to end his days in East Berlin: Hanns Eisler’s life was one long exile against the backcloth of the artistic, technical, and political revolutions of the 20th century. Distance, irony, and melancholy are the aesthetic corollaries that characterise the lieder presented here, their atmosphere often evoking the despair of those dark times. The early piano sonata gained the young Eisler an admiration that has never dimmed since.